Originally Posted by
DozyWannabe
And it was quite possible for an application to take out other applications on home and business OSes until very recently (until Windows NT4/2000 and MacOS X to be precise), because the previous generation did not have adequate "siloing" of running tasks.
14 -15 years is "recent"? There are people that made a profession from looking for holes in the "virtual fence" between OS and applications to use that to do damage, and others to close, or fix these holes, and prevent such damage.
We're getting *way* off-topic here though - it was an analogy, not an exhaustive description - and your version lacks the main point I was trying to make, which is that real-time systems in aircraft are not "centralised" around an OS in the same way home and business computers are.
It's very far from an exhaustive description. Among other things, I think I've made that difference clear, between a Home Computer OS and applications, and a A/C's real-time computer OS, and application, which is why I wrote it.